Expand Our Requirements, Open Our Future

Leon Hu ‘29

 Opinion Editor

One of the main hallmarks of the liberal arts model is the sheer openness of its academic curriculums. Ironically, for colleges that prioritize the breadth of experiences and disciplines conferred on students, the relative lack of restrictions on what course offerings students must choose is one of the major advantages of schools like ours. Combined with consistent access to professors and tight-knit communities, this becomes a selling point that draws many people to our school nationwide — including myself. 

Yet, it feels like something is off. There is so much that we do right, but there is a bit that we do not. With its minimal requirements, our curriculum is just barely shy of allowing true academic freedom — and at what cost?

Relative to most larger schools, like, say, UConn, our distribution and General Education requirements are minimal. Our distribution requirements are one class only (save for the writing-intensive and second language requirements), and most can be covered quite easily within our four years here. The requirements are straightforward to fulfill and cover topics that are crucial to a truly comprehensive education. 

However, if anything, they feel a bit too natural to fulfill for many graduates. The intent of general education and distribution requirements is to ensure that all Trinity graduates fulfill coursework covering enough of the sciences and liberal arts that we can be confident that they have the knowledge that we associate with a Trinity diploma. Nonetheless, when you have a range of students attracted by the promise of openness and academic freedom, you also attract students who are willing to take many things. These are students who already plan to study a breadth of topics that would, or should, fulfill their academic requirements. This is so much so that it is an extremely common occurrence for Trinity students to double major, often in non-adjacent fields. 

If most Trinity students are already willing to explore enough academic topics to fulfill our general education requirements, then what is the point of having those requirements?

It feels redundant for the minimal constraints of our general education to impose fields of study that students already plan to fulfill. In fact, it runs actively against the motivated, interdisciplinary philosophy that defines Trinity. It signals to students that there are certain areas that they must take courses in, even if they have plans to take a range of courses elsewhere, that must be fulfilled and worried about if we want to graduate on-time. In effect, this creates classes college-wide where students are uninterested in the topics they are studying because they never wanted to study them in the first place. 

The topics mandated by our college are vital areas of study to any college experience — like the arts, humanities and social sciences — but it is questionable if forcing students to engage in these fields actually creates the intended breadth of knowledge purportedly behind the requirements. There is a difference between being intrinsically motivated and highly interested in a topic versus being motivated by mere extrinsic factors, like distributions. 

When intro-level classes for these requirements are taken for the sole purpose of distributions, there is little learning done. Since there is no reason to maintain the knowledge gained following the acquisition of the external motivator — the grade and fulfilled requirement —  there is little reason for students to attempt to take anything meaningful away from the class that would contribute to their future lives. The requirements serve as a check for credits, not meaningful knowledge.

This is not an issue for classes that students take from a genuine interest in the subject. When we are fascinated by something that we learn, we stick with it. For many high-level major classes and popular electives, like Creative Writing, people are happy to take them and engage with them simply because they are interested in them. In fact, many electives that students take are only vaguely related to distribution requirements — yet they are still willing to be given time to broaden the academic experience. There is no need for an external motivator like credit requirements to convince people to apply their learning to new situations. 

Given this, what purpose do our distributions truly hold? Are they to “ensure suitable breadth in their programs of study,” or are they there to create the illusion of well-roundedness? As a liberal arts college, we already attract students seeking a broadened academic experience. Our majors are only a mere twelve credits each — about a third of the total required to graduate — so there is almost no way for students to not take an array across disciplines to begin with. It is time to move towards an open curriculum. We can follow the precedent set by fellow NESCAC schools, like Amherst, Hamilton and Wesleyan. Our requirements can be broadened, even minimized, to allow for maximal academic flexibility and the pursuit of true interdisciplinary thought. If a student takes a class, let it not be for checkmark on the transcript — let it be for the pursuit of true intellectual freedom.